Bonds: A Cursed Six novel (The Cursed Six Book 1)

by Clarrisa R. Smithe

  Sin, beauty, ruin.

  Why had he done it? What had he done wrong?

  He clenched his hands to fists.

  Hide and seek. Chasing crystal innocence—no, protecting. To simply warn Princess Astrid of consequences, to inspect the vandalising of his father's property.

  Simplicity did not exist.

  How authenticating that game of hiding only to be found had been to the fact. His leading her into the dark passages, taking her where heathens of the north ought not be allowed. In the dim observation panel, the girl's eyes had pled onto him a separate story. A need to be taught, what was right and what was wrong. A plea for a second chance, for she had not decided her birth. At least, that's what he'd been gullible enough to believe.

  Close your eyes.

  He gritted his teeth.

  Open.

  Sin, beauty, ruin.

  Tristian glanced beside him at the sudden exclamation of a venue's client. A woman dressed as ostentatiously as his Aunt Charleé, preening over a set of pearls held to light by a stout man with a unique moustache and no other facial hair to his unknown name.

  An inch east, and another woman placed a familiar hand on the shoulder of her lady, who whispered in her ear words he could not hear, and together they laughed.

  Then looked to him.

  He swallowed roughly and set his eyes elsewhere, only to see a lean man scoff, then turn a sly glance his way, condescending, implicit, demonising. A notch of his head to divert his friend's attention toward the crown prince. The hearty chuckles to rumble from their throats were knowing, derisive. Pitying.

  They knew.

  They all knew what he'd done. And they laughed.

  Blackness crept into the rim of his vision, serpents coiling. The sole path for air constricted, his chest inflamed as he noted the entire mass sniggering, delighted at his sins. If they knew of the wrong he'd done, did they too know why?

  His feet had taken him to that Misseldon female's doors late in the night out of spite. Retribution. His blood, his brother, his sister, had accused him of such a heinous crime without question. Their hearts had been eager to chasten him a degenerate in his God's eyes. He had sinned, he knew. Lusted after one whose lineage was detestable, if not her age. But he'd parted her thighs for none other than the darkest spite.

  And now it was this spite which would take from him his very soul. For that was indeed what he would be set to lose upon marrying such a heretic, one who bent knee to false gods.

  And still... they laughed. They found merriment in his damnation.

  A laughter that rose in crescendo, taken in by the parlour's high beams and doubled back at him in multitudes so that he discovered his ears could not take the noise, their judgmental hearts like blaring trumpets. A shrilling ululation, singing about the hand the crown prince was set to take, how his moment of brief, sinister pleasure—sin, beauty, ruin!—had cost him a union the angels themselves had anticipated.

  Too much noise. Too loud.

  He made for the other end of the parlour to the stairwell that would lead him to his mother, but upon meeting at its center, was met by a deluge of bodies and faces.

  "Prince Tristian!"

  "Prince Tristian!"

  "Prince Tristian, a gram and a 7 rose brace for you?"

  "The best imitation tree silk your father ever can find, right here, right here!"

  Gifts. Pacifiers. Mockery. Noise.

  Dark serpents swallowed more of his vision as the voices slithered into his ears, deep enough to surely draw blood. And couldn't they hear themselves, how ungodly a pitch they were reaching, loud. Too loud.

  "A headpiece of white hawk feathers for our Princess Jocelyn? Or perhaps..."

  Pain impaled his skull, white needles pricking his eyes so that he pressed the pad of his hands to their sockets with brutal force and at once shouted, "Leave!"

  His voice was drowned by the crowd.

  "LEAVE!" He opened his eyes but saw raging darkness. Still he gripped the nearest stand and with great force, flung it, but the screams and panic to pierce his ears next sent him to his knees.

  "Fetch someone for the prince!"

  "Fetch a guard."

  "Oh, by God, remember the last one. Do good and fetch the Queen!"

  "Leave me!" He needed no audience for his sins! He needed not their gifts of pity. Nor their mocking laughter. Being wed to the creature was punishment enough.

  Sin, beauty, ruin!

  Noise blurred into the white fuzz of a ravine's chaotic torrent. The prince stumbled back, blind, deaf, head pounding. Until his heel met the short stairs of the king and queen's sitting platform, where he fell back and felt not a sliver of pain.

  There he remained, time losing essence. Until the noise became stark quiet. Until the sun moved across the line of tall windows. Until the unmistakable click of his mother's heels stole the darkness from his eyes.

  Sitting there as he was on the steps, being the age and height he was, the prince could not bring his gaze to lift.

  To face judgment.

  ~ PETRA ~

  She had been informed of her son's turn when in a meeting with guild members, and while she never did enjoy interrupting her work, the welfare of her son had to come first. It was not the first time she had been called to see to him. In fact, there had been many occurrences over the years, yet it did little to soothe her concern. Apologies were made, brief promises that they would have to continue some other time, but she did not tarry for long.

  The courtiers parted as if she was some wooden ram breaking the barricade they unintentionally provided. It was another thing she wished to adjust. The court was too busy at times and ought to be quieter. For the sake of the children.

  The children who were grown but still needed their Mama. Her oldest child sat on the steps as she approached, and she was thankful that he was indeed alive. Each time she fretted that something may have gone wrong, gone further than expected, tipped him over the edge and brought him into a state that he could not be brought back from.

  She crouched and sat beside him and with a slight gesture waved away what few guards and handmaidens remained within the parlour.

  "You gave me quite a scare," she began as she placed a hand on the small of his back. He was too large to be gathered easily in her arms and certainly would not sit in her lap, but he was not beyond comfort. "What are you like? Scaring your silly old Mama?"

  But she had registered the look in his eyes, or rather, how he did not look. She had seen it many times before and was certain all mothers regardless of where they were in the world, or where they stood on society's unstable hierarchy, could read in an instant.

  He had done something wrong.

  "How are you feeling now, dear?" She chose a different tactic. He could offer his wrongdoing to her by means of a confession rather than have it forced from him like a barber pulling teeth.

  There was an effort in those molten gold disks, a shifty attempt to glance over to the recognisable voice, though she only felt the tight muscles in his back stiffen to iron. His lips parted.

  Silence came out.

  She would have to resort to the pliers. Why had she ever expected it to be easy? The term and Tristian never had travelled through life hand-in-hand. "I see. Well, you know you can always talk to me. Tell me anything, don't you, my darling?"

  Silence.

  She had the pliers in hand and it appeared she would have to twist before she pulled. With a sigh, she commenced rubbing small circles into his back. Gradually, they transversed upwards until she had her fingers splayed at his collar. "It gets so rowdy here at times. One can barely hear one's thoughts. I think you and I understand that more than anyone else."

  And like that, the tension released from his shoulders, their mutual aversion to noise tying her to the post of his darkness. His eyes remained aloft. "Father and his parties, Jocelyn and Bethan's guilds. They bring them here."

  His voice was a coarse whisper. A little boy speaking. So simp
le in the complaint, yet the matter behind the complaint was so very irritating. Had it not been for the prosperity these visitors brought, she imagined that they would have reverted back to the traditional system of the calendar of festivals, periods of a few weeks spent at court here and there, and the rest of the year meetings being strictly on kingdom-running business with a few special one-off celebrations here and there. But it was her husband's way, his love for the hustle and bustle, the busyness, the parties.

  Had he not thought how it affected their son?

  "Oh, I know. If only they could leave us in peace, wouldn't that be grand? In peacetime there is never truly peace, yet we never yearn for the opposite." She continued to rub between his shoulder blades. "Would it please you if you and I took some time away to the country? Walking, riding, touring the surrounding churches. Unless, you would rather not go away with your old Mama."

  Pain pulled his brows together, his mouth becoming a stringent line. "You'll not wish to go anywhere with me after this day." And then he did what he had never done; her son shrugged away from her hand and took up a scathing tone. "You'll not want to touch me."

  She stared at the hovering hand as if it had been devoured by flames. The hurt was not disguised. Rather, it was etched all over, tugging at her features as her breaths became shudders.

  "I think you are talking nonsense. You are my son." Had he done something irredeemable? Was her other son lying somewhere, cold and still, unmoving after years of threats and sparring? No, he would never do that. It was an overreaction on her part, just as it was likely the same on his.

  "You have something to tell me."

  He had yet to turn to her, to so much as allow her a proper glimpse at what story lay within his gaze. And maybe that was for the best. In front of him, he opened his hand nearest to her as though he wished for her to take it, but instead, he was more keen on staring at its palm for what seemed a day, before murmuring evenly, "I did what I did because she was a wicked girl, Mama." He closed his hand. "Though I wonder if I am no better now."

  Her thoughts ran wild with all he could have done. It was easy, too easy, to imagine him riding to a nearby town to put a girl to death for something he deemed heretical. Some punishment afforded to a girl at court perhaps? A serving girl who had stepped over a line he set and displeased him? A woman whose company he favoured in the night punished for spilling his secrets?

  She swallowed. "I think I need to know what you did to cast my opinion, my dear."

  "I struck her."

  "Oh—"

  "Not nearly hard enough."

  "Your sisters?"

  He flinched. "I am not so terrible."

  She was sorry for suggesting it. "Then who?"

  There it was, the root of her son's dread. "The winter heathen Father insists I am to marry, as oppose to my rightful fiancee. As oppose to the female I have spent years believing I was to have. The woman will be devastated when she hears of this. Father Conwell will turn a deaf ear to my prayers and devotions. The people have already begun to mock me!"

  Each word was taken in, digested, and yet she was rendered completely simple. She could recall the day when Father Conwell's niece was brought to curtsey before her eleven year old son. Promises were made with his young voice, her own still heavy with the lisps of toddlerhood. Gregor had ordered Tristian to marry another? Some winter heathen.

  "Who is this... other girl?"

  She needed to hear the name from his lips.

  His lips pulled back on the sneer, "Astrid Misseldon."

  Her heart was the sudden weight of a smith's iron. Astrid was the only one of her kind she had ever met. A nice enough girl, though she was not one of them. Not cut of summer clay, but ice. And she was a child.

  Her husband had lost his mind.

  "Why does your father wish for you to marry a girl so young?"

  All that confidence in his voice and gaze was instantly reintroduced to the arabesque tiles. His fingernails buried into his palms. "The spring festival, upon her visit here... she and I... She... I committed a grave sin. Unforgivable in any light. I took her to my bed—and now she is here because there is a child inside of her."

  It seemed that the husband she had suspected of having lost his mind was the man who wished to uphold some form of honour. Another grandchild, naturally a source for joy. Usually. When there were few to no complications. Not like this.

  "I see. Oh dear."

  Her voice carried little expression, and that was reason enough to finally earn his gaze, and looking upon it was arguably no different from that of peering into the sun, for both were flaring.

  "Do not be disappointed like the others. I know my sin. I have accepted this fate, that female, and I will not see the Hanson name sullied by the likes of her. This I swear."

  "I trust you will guide her well, for she is your responsibility now. As is the child she carries." She held his gaze and sighed.

  Her son was nodding, his expression evermore fierce. "I have sought proper punishment as of this very moment. She is in the sunroom, waiting for me. I will see to it she disturbs not one resident. And that is only the start of it."

  Her eyes widened in surprise. The sunroom was no place for a non-native of their land, or at least, a person with half an ounce of sense. Blistering heat, so bright the eyes carried the memory of the sun for days to come.

  "Tristian. Would you put a servant in there, if they displeased you?"

  "Yes," he said as though it were obvious, and perhaps it should have been, in retrospect of the man she'd asked.

  "Well, if you were left in charge of your sister and she displeased you, would you put her in there?"

  "Which one?"

  "Little Beth."

  He scowled. "There is nothing Bethan could do, short of selling her soul, that would warrant such a fate. Besides, the female could use some sunlight."

  She sighed. "You do not put anyone in that room, least of all a pregnant girl. It's dangerous."

  "She deserves it. She has come here and ruined a holy union with her halfbreed."

  "You speak of my grandchild, and your child." The expression creeped back and she tried with all her might not to raise her voice. "The child is not a halfbreed."

  But he had no qualms with raising his voice. Nor jolting to his feet and shoving the nearest revenue stand of neck garnets, the needles and wool ties scattering across the floors. "It sits in that female! And you are like Father, like Rhenan. Protecting her. Protecting it! And you yell, you yell at me over my duties as if I cannot hear you!"

  She did not offer a second glance to the tumbling items, but rather, remained focussed on her son. She had always sensed the darkness in him, the vagarity of a tide's abrupt shift from calm to detrimental. For a man who triumphed her own size, there was but one sure remedy: serenity.

  "I wish to protect you both. The three of you. What you did was foolish and you will deal with the consequences for the rest of your days, but I will help you come to terms with it. Tell me, calmly, if you had wed Lady Constance and announced she was carrying your child, how would you feel? Honestly, my dear."

  There was a berth of silence, where he stared at her, chest rising and falling rapidly, but there seemed to be nothing in her words in which he could channel rage into, and therefore he tipped his head back, his arms crossing over the wide span of his chest.

  Breathing, counting, envisioning the anger falling away the way she'd taught him.

  Only when it appeared he would not kneel over and choke on fury did he answer. Calmly. "A son or a daughter?"

  "Tell me what you would think of both."

  "I would think nothing of a daughter, but everything of a son."

  Of course he would say that. "A shame. I'm someone's daughter, you know?"

  "Not the daughter of a king."

  She nodded. That was a fact, though he was no king yet. "Yes. Daughters are useful though, if you wish to consider their future roles. What would you do with your son?"


  He still stared up at the ceiling of murals, his breathing becoming tame. "Raise him as well as I know how." The aspiration of all good parents, it seemed.

  "Would you love him?"

  "Yes."

  "You would not love a daughter?"

  He looked at her. "So long as our name goes on, what do these things matter? I will see the halfbreed fed and nursed. I will see its keeper fed and watered. The kingdom will persist."

  She nodded and resisted the urge to laugh. It appeared the winter heathen was now nothing more than an indoor plant. "If the child is a girl, she is an 'it' and a halfbreed. If the child is a boy, he is a 'he' and his mother, is she a keeper or a Mama?"

  He bristled. "A deceptive heathen."

  "Who carries your child, will birth your child, and will nurse your child. You cannot resent her for that, surely? Well, not forever."

  Her son regarded her with blankness for a moment, then answered her with a question. "I suppose this means you are not in favour of killing them both?"

  "No and I do not think you are either. We ought to consider the positives."

  "There are none."

  "I will view any grandchildren as blessings, you know that."

  "God will not. Father Conwell will not."

  She swallowed at the mention of the name. No, he would not. Neither would his niece. Or their followers. "God will approve if you make an honest woman out of Astrid. She is young. She has time to learn and follow. I can help you there."

  He postured then. "I need no help controlling a heretic child."

  "Refer not to her as a child, or a girl, but as a lady. It breaks fact, yet may bring less emphasis to her youth."

  "Winter heathen, then," he said and added, "I must go to the Sirista and relay this catastrophe, beg the Father's forgiveness and see to it their wounds are compensated for."

  Her son had some sense of responsibility at least. She nodded her understanding. "Of course. However many roses they may want, they will have. Carry your silly mistake on your shoulders like the man you are and the marriage will proceed smoothly, as will the wedding. How soon that will be, I do not know. Did she declare how far along she is?"